Technology

Amazon has been successfully feeding talking points, video footage, and other corporate messaging to local television news stations ahead of its annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday. The footage and script are designed to paint Amazon in a positive light as it faces a torrent of bad media coverage and criticism from activists and politicians over its handling of workplace safety issues during the coronavirus pandemic. As Zach Rael, an anchor for ABC affiliate KOCO 5 News in Oklahoma City, pointed out on Twitter earlier this morning, Amazon’s public relations team has been emailing TV stations around the country with prepared scripts and b-roll packages that promote the company’s safety precautions and other measures to combat COVID-19 among its warehouse workforce. So far, eight Amazon ...

On Tuesday, Twitter labeled two tweets from President Donald Trump making false statements about mail-in voting as “potentially misleading.” It’s the first time the platform has fact-checked the president. The label was imposed on two tweets Trump posted Tuesday morning falsely claiming that “mail-in ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent” and would result in “a rigged election.” The tweets focused primarily on California’s efforts to expand mail-in voting due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. On Sunday, the Republican National Committee sued California Gov. Gavin Newsom over the state’s moves to expand mail-in voting. According to a Twitter spokesperson, the tweets “contain potentially misleading information about voting processes and have been labeled to provide add...

Apple released macOS Catalina 10.15.5 today, adding a new battery health feature and new FaceTime options. That battery health feature could extend the life of your MacBook’s battery. Lithium-ion batteries, like the ones in a MacBook, slowly age over time, which means they typically begin to hold less of a charge as the computer gets older. Apple’s new battery health feature in macOS is designed to slow that aging process so that your battery will hold more charge over a longer period of time. Here’s how the feature works behind the scenes, as described by my colleagues Dieter Bohn and Jacob Kastrenakes last month: …in certain cases, seeing 100 percent battery life in your menu bar may not necessarily mean it’s the maximum your battery could charge to. Instead of meaning that it’s ch...

The controversial film Planet of the Humans, produced by Michael Moore, was taken down from YouTube on Monday because of a copyright infringement claim. The complaint was filed by photographer Toby Smith, who was alarmed that his work was used in a film that he doesn’t support, The Guardian reports. “I don’t agree with its message and I don’t like the misleading use of facts in its narrative,” Smith said to The Guardian. A few seconds of Smith’s video, Rare Earthenware, were used in Moore’s film, which criticizes renewable energy. “I don’t agree with its message and I don’t like the misleading use of facts in its narrative.” In a statement to The Verge, director Jeff Gibbs denied any copyright violation in his film, which garnered more than 8 million views on YouTube. “This attempt to take...

Apple will reopen around 100 retail stores in the US by the end of the week, the company confirmed to The Verge. That will put Apple’s active retail locations in the country at 130 out of 271 spread out across 21 states. The company is reopening each location in phases, so some stores will support only curbside pickup, while others will allow in-store service and sales. The states that will soon have active Apple Stores are: Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin, the report says. New York’s only store to reopen will be its Victor location just outside Rochester, New York, with more of the state’s stores — including those in New York City — to reopen la...

Twitch has re-signed popular streamers Jaryd “Summit1G” Lazar, Brett “Dakotaz” Hoffman, and Josh “JoshOG” Beaver, ensuring they will stay with the service at a time when others are taking deals to stream elsewhere (via The Washington Post). The terms of the contracts were not disclosed, though they are “multi-year content deals,” according to a press release from Loaded, the talent agency that represents all three of them. Combined, Lazar, Hoffman, and Beaver have more than 11 million Twitch followers. Lazar has more than 5 million followers, making him one of the top 10 most-followed streamers on Twitch. Hoffman has 4.3 million followers, and Beaver has 1.73 million followers. “At a time when community is paramount, these Creators are a core part of Twitch’s mission to bring people togeth...

Blizzard Entertainment will not host its annual BlizzCon event this year due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The event is usually held later in the year, with BlizzCon 2019 kicking off on November 1st and concluding on November 2nd. In early April, Blizzard announced that it was uncertain about hosting BlizzCon this year. Despite canceling the convention, Blizzard may be looking to hold a virtual event in its place. “We’re talking about how we might be able to channel the BlizzCon spirit and connect with you in some way online,” BlizzCon executive producer Saralyn Smith said in a blog post. BlizzCon is just one of many video game conventions that have been canceled this year as a result of the pandemic. QuakeCon, Gamescom, and Tokyo Game Show have all been canceled, too. The biggest gam...

Microsoft created a fun Easter egg for its Edge browser to reveal the new logo last year, and it’s now available for everyone to play. The Edge surf game is very similar to SkiFree, a classic game that was released as part of Microsoft’s Entertainment Pack 3 for Windows back in 1991. While it was used as part of an elaborate Easter egg hunt, where Microsoft employees posted cryptic clues to a series of puzzles and images, it’s now an official offline game inside Microsoft Edge. You can access it from edge://surf/ in the address bar in Edge. There are three modes available: a classic surf mode, a time trial, and a slalom mode where you surf between gates. The standard classic surf mode is an endless surfer mode where you have to avoid obstacles and a kraken chasing after you. Time trial is ...

On the surface, Diablo isn’t exactly what most people would call comforting. It’s a series about exploring dark realms and fighting all manner of undead and demonic monsters. But there’s something about its formula of exploring dungeons, gathering loot, and steadily becoming immensely powerful that makes it easy to jump into, despite the dark subject matter. That feeling of comfort is even more pronounced when you take that formula and apply it to a familiar world, like, say, the Marvel universe. Now, the same can be said of Minecraft. Minecraft Dungeons is exactly what it sounds like. It takes the bestselling series, strips away its two most iconic features (mining and crafting), and replaces them with a light, charming experience that’s perhaps the most approachable Diablo-like game yet ...

During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, Sandra Quinn asked hundreds of Americans if they’d be willing to take a hypothetical vaccine that was authorized for emergency use but wasn’t formally approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Most were hesitant: Quinn, the senior associate director of the Maryland Center for Health Equity at the University of Maryland, found that only around 8 percent of people said that they’d definitely take the vaccine. An emergency H1N1 vaccine never came to be, but the questions Quinn asked 10 years ago are back in the spotlight today, as pharmaceutical companies in the US and around the world fight to produce a coronavirus vaccine as quickly as possible. It’s a real possibility that the FDA could allow for emergency use of a vaccine this time around. The United Sta...

An internal Facebook report presented to executives in 2018 found that the company was well aware that its product, specifically its recommendation engine, stoked divisiveness and polarization, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Yet, despite warnings about the effect this could have on society, Facebook leadership ignored the findings and has largely tried to absolve itself of responsibility with regard to partisan divides and other forms of polarization it directly contributed to, the report states. The reason? Changes might disproportionately affect conservatives and might hurt engagement, the report says. “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” one slide from the presentation read. The group found that if this core element of its recom...